A VISIT TO MIDDLE EAST REFUGEES

On February 21 and 22, I will be attending an International Forum on the plight of the world's refugees in Rome--sponsored by the Church and bringing together many persons and organizations helping the vast refugee populations of the world.

Then on February 23, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, Kevin Appleby and I will fly to Lebanon to begin a four-country tour to be with various refugee groups.  Almost all of these refugees have had to flee terror, wars, persecution, lack of food and medical care, and general hopelessness.  Our mission is to bring that sense of "closeness" of Pope Francis to them, and to extend reasons for hope.  We will also be encouraging the caregivers taking care of refugees in so many places.

From Lebanon, we will fly to Jordan to visit refugee centers there, then on to Erbil in northern Iraq, and conclude in Greece where so many refugees are stranded.

Please continue to pray for all refugees and peoples on the move across the world, and to support the tremendous work of Catholic Relief Services [CRS] in so many countries around the world.

IF YOU LIKE PEACHES, YOU'LL LOVE IMMIGRANTS

Without immigrants, those with legal status and those without, the State of California would shut down.

Recently I was driving through the lush San Joaquin Valley of central California listening to a local talk radio station which was berating immigrants, regurgitating the ill-informed rhetoric that has become so popular in the recent election campaigns. As I passed endless miles of dormant orchards and vineyards, open fields awaiting Spring planting, my eye caught sight of a group of men pruning peach trees.

I found an exit from the highway and doubled back to get a closer look. These young peach trees were just beginning to sprout pink and red buds, so the men were working quickly to complete the entire orchard.

Their pruning these trees is not a simple task. It requires both science and art, and next season's peach harvest depends on these farm workers having a special eye to prune the right branch. I was fascinated to watch once again these professionals at work. One worker explained that this coming season's peaches will form on the new small branches from last year. Pruning the wrong ones means no peaches.

These are immigrants--some may or may not have legal status.





While these farm workers were busy at this orchard, thousands more were spread across this fertile Valley pruning grape vines and many other fruit trees so that you and I can enjoy fresh fruit, table grapes, and fine wines in the coming months.

I asked these workers if non-Hispanics ever work along side them, and they looked at me amazed. They said that even in the midst of the Great Recession they never saw anyone approach the farmers looking for work doing these difficult tasks.

These immigrants are essential to California's agricultural business, one of the prominent elements of the state's economy. California leads the nation in the production of fruits, vegetables, wines and nuts. The state's most valuable crops are nuts, grapes, cotton, flowers, and oranges. California produces the major share of U.S. domestic wine. Dairy products contribute the single largest share of farm income.

Without our immigrant brothers and sisters, agricultural would quickly vanish as the great economic engine it is.





In California immigrants are the employee engine not only of agriculture, but also of tourism, hotel and motel employees, restaurant chefs and staff, clothing manufacturing, landscape installation and maintenance, all phases of construction work, car washing and detailing, and countless other segments of production and service.

Of this group of farm workers I met one who had just finished high school. He was helping his father prune trees because they must be pruned before the buds emerged. There was a rhythmical urgency to their work, and he told me they had hundreds more acres to prune. He said that soon he was going to go to Fresno State University and major in agriculture so that he could be part of the management and science side of farming.

This brief stop on the way home was a vivid reminder to me of the essential value of our immigrant brothers and sisters to all of us across the country.

As I continued my journey south, I prayed a special Rosary for these farm workers and their families--invoking the assistance of Our Lady of Guadalupe, San Juan Diego, and St. Joseph the Worker.

The next time I enjoy a peach, I'll wonder which tree it came from.

Our Lady of Guadalupe 2016

As we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe this Monday (December 12th), I wholeheartedly join my brothers in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in our call for a National Day of Prayer and Solidarity with our immigrant families. I am deeply grateful to our Conference President and Vice President, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and our own Archbishop José Gomez, for their leadership in this important effort for the migrant communities in our country, whose fears and challenges in these troubling days cry out for our prayers and our action on their behalf.

I was recently privileged to share some impressions on the difficulties facing the immigrants among us in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaper. Since the article was published in Italian, the following is my original draft in English.

On her feast and always, may America’s presence of Mary, our Mother Guadalupe, guide and help our Church as week seek to serve her children. ¡Virgen de Guadalupe, ruega por nosotros!

_____________

“The American Dream”

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
Archbishop-emeritus of Los Angeles

Over recent days, the United States Senate heard the moving story of a young man named Rey Piñeda.  Born in Mexico, Rey came with his family to the United States at age 2. Because of his status as an undocumented immigrant, he was prevented from fulfilling his hopes for an education and pursuing his life’s ideals, until the 2012 introduction of the national Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, which has provided him and close to 770,000 other young people protection from deportation and allowing them authorization to work.

While President-elect Donald J. Trump has pledged to implement several severe immigration policies, including the deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants and the construction of a wall on the Mexican border, the most pressing and imminent challenge his incoming Administration presents on this critical issue is its promise to rescind the DACA program.

Fr. Rey Piñeda

Recently ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Atlanta and assigned as a parochial vicar at its Cathedral of Christ the King, for Fr. Rey Piñeda, the closing of DACA would likely mean the end his ability to serve, forcing him and thousands of others to return to “the shadows,” where our undocumented sisters and brothers live in fear of a “knock at the door” taking them away from their homes, their families and life as they know it, most of them never to return.

Known as the “DREAMers,” these young people in their teens and 20s were brought to the U.S. by their parents as young children, unaware of any laws or documents, only knowing and seeking to be with their families.  More than being bright and talented contributors to this nation, they are our future leaders, even in the Church: even today, they are already Americans in everything but citizenship.

According to a study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, the DREAMers are deeply embedded in U.S. society.  Eighty-five percent have lived in the United States for ten years or more.  Ninety-three percent have at least a high school degree, with forty-three percent having attended college or graduated from college.  Eighty-nine percent are employed – and thus pay taxes – while ninety-one percent speak English very well or exclusively.

To remove protections from this group is not only mean-spirited, but a foolish act of self-sabotage to both the national interest and the values which have always made this country great.  Today, as it has been since our nation’s founding, the promise and common good of this nation is best served when we support hard-working, intelligent young people, and give them the means to flourish.  It is in this tradition that preserving DACA is our only sane, moral and truly American way forward.

Unlike the Border wall and several other aspects of his immigration proposals, upon the moment he assumes office next month, President-elect Trump will be able to eliminate the DACA program with the stroke of a pen.  He will, however, find that removing these young people will not be so easy.  I believe that the American people will not allow it, both in terms of public opinion and in active resistance.

In other words, I believe Americans will not cooperate with Mr. Trump's Administration on implementing mass deportations, most especially the deportation of young immigrants.  These DREAMers are now part of our social fabric—we see them everyday in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools.  They have forged bonds with U.S. citizens who know them as people, not a "status" or piece of paperwork.  They are contributing their energies to this country, and have fought for their God-given rights and their place at our national table.  Some serve in the U.S. military, others in education or health-care, yet regardless of their chosen profession, the DREAMers show us that the “American dream” is alive and well in their hands.

Should President-elect Trump move to eliminate DACA, calls have already emerged for churches and communities to protect them by not cooperating with immigration enforcement and by providing sanctuary for those likely to be affected.  I add my voice to that call, and I am particularly gratified to be joined by a growing number of my brother bishops, as well as nearly 100 of the presidents of our nation’s Catholic colleges and universities, who have spoken up in support of these sisters and brothers of ours.

Pope Francis captures the spirit and heart of what we seek to say. “Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity,” he wrote in 2014.  “They are children, women, and men who leave their homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and being, but above all being more.”

Still closer to home, on his visit last year to our nation’s very birthplace at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the Holy Father expressed his “particular affection” for the U.S.’ latest generation of new arrivals, urging them to “not be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face.

“You bring many gifts to your new nation,” the Pope told today's migrants among us, encouraging them to “never be ashamed of your traditions… which are something you can bring to enrich the life of this American land.”

After an election campaign which has exposed bitter divides among our people and, sadly, unearthed sicknesses in our society that many thought were left in the past, advocating for policies like DACA and those it benefits is just one part of the challenge we face as a Church.

On one side, the fear and anxiety which have gripped our immigrant communities in these days isn’t simply real, but currently running as deep as many of us who serve among them have ever seen.  Even more, however, as citizens committed to the common good and pastors who seek to serve and imitate the Lord Jesus, one of the harrowing lessons this campaign season has shown us is the degree to which many people who profess to be Christian, and even Catholic, have succumbed to the “throwaway culture,” both in our national discourse and in the policies they deemed acceptable to support.

While it is true that the current political environment of the U.S. has made many of our faithful feel “politically homeless,” I fear that many Christians, among them more than a few Catholics, have somehow become misled about the demands of the Gospel regarding how we treat our neighbor, or how we answer the very question of “Who is our neighbor?”  Much as we have sought to be prophetic witnesses to Christ and His teaching in and out of season, the new political reality places a particular burden upon our ministry as shepherds: in word and example, to express ever more powerfully to our people that the commission to serve “the least of these” is not an ideological proposal that one may see as disposable but, as Pope Francis has so frequently described it, “the protocol by which we,” as Christians, “will be judged.”

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  The threat of deporting young people to a country they do not know, or the prospect that the Church’s efforts on behalf of immigrants could face civil intimidation or attempts at closure, raise the specter of an injustice that would threaten all of us, flying in the face of fairness and human decency, not to mention the very same Gospel which inspired Dr King’s movement for civil rights.  Even the possibility of these dangers would gravely weaken our communities and diminish us as a nation.  In these days, then, let us pray for the courage, wisdom and fidelity to serve our moment’s “suffering flesh of Christ” among us, in the confident faith that what we do for them, we have done for Him.

Later this month, our immigrant families will gather again at the feet of their beloved Mother as we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  May la Virgen Morena, Patroness of this one American land, intercede for her children and our entire society, that our service and witness on behalf of her Son’s “least ones” may bring about a new spirit of reconciliation, liberty and justice for all.

MOTHER TERESA of CALCUTTA TO BECOME SAINT

On Sunday, September 4, 2016 Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be placed in the Church's official Book of Saints.

However, for all of us around the world, she has been a "saint" for many decades.

 Her willingness to go out onto the streets of Calcutta and to bring home to her convert the aged, the dying, the gravely ill, people "thrown away" by society.

She always explained so simply:  "There is no mystery to what my Sisters and I do.  We go out onto the streets, and see in the faces of the miserable and destitute, the face of Jesus.  We just pick up Jesus and take him home with us."

Her heroic following of Jesus in the Gospels is the foundation of her life and ministry.  Like Jesus, though, she knew how important it was to spend time in prayer with the Father.  That's why she and her Community devote many hours each day in prayer.  Prayer keeps us linked to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The first members of her Missionaries of Charity we received in Los Angeles were her Brothers.  Their ministry was across downtown Los Angeles, and they reached out to young adults who were on the streets.  Many were undocumented, others were suffering with addictions, still others were abandoned.  They saw the face of Jesus in each one, and following Mother's guidance and witness, they offered to serve them.

The second group of her Missionaries were her active Sisters.  They established their ministry in a former convent in Lynwood, and focused their ministry upon single mothers with young children, pregnant women on the streets, those most in need.

The third group were her Contemplative Sisters who live in a small house in Alhambra, and devote themselves to praying for the spiritual and pastoral success of all the works of their apostolates around the world, as well as our apostolates here in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

After the death of Mother Teresa, I wrote to Pope John Paul II to ask him to begin the process towards canonization without waiting the customary five years following death.  This was granted, and her path towards the Church's official recognition that she lived out her life with heroic virtue was assured.

May St. Mother Teresa intercede for each one of us, and help us to see the face of Jesus in each other.  And the more disfigured the face, the clearer the face of Jesus!

ARCHBISHOP CHRISTOPHE PIERRE: A GIFT FROM POPE FRANCIS

Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Christophe Pierre to serve as the next Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, and through this appointment Pope Francis continues to demonstrate his care and concern for the Church in our country.

Archbishop Pierre is a native of France, and as a young priest, attended the Academy in Rome which trains priests to serve in the diplomatic service of the Holy See.

In 1995, Father Pierre was appointed as the Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, and ordained as Archbishop.  His first posting to this country, the poorest in the western hemisphere, came at a time of great political unrest in Haiti.  There was great tension and conflict between the president and the military, and the United Nations had to intervene to help establish order.

This first posting to such a poor and desperate nation provided Archbishop Pierre with the opportunity to serve some of the poorest people in the world, and to help guide the Church in its efforts to bring a sense of dignity and human rights to the population.  This posting helped Archbishop Pierre understand the plight of desperate peoples living in abject poverty, and to bring the Church's influence to assist them.

In 1999 Archbishop Pierre was sent to Uganda, Africa, to serve as Apostolic Nuncio to that country.  Here he encountered another poor and embattled country.  For eight years, Archbishop Pierre assisted the Church deal with civil war, the brutal Lord's Resistance Army terrorist group, and the massive displacement of peoples because of the unrest and attacks upon people  in their villages.  Poverty, refugees, hunger, and terror were the order of the day during his tenure in this country.

Then, in 2007 Archbishop Pierre was assigned as the Apostolic Nuncio to Mexico, our neighbor to the south.  During his nine years in that post he experienced the upheaval created by gangs and cartels involved in human trafficking and narcotics trafficking.  He saw first-hand poverty, the lack of adequate employment, and the flow of immigrants and refugees from neighboring countries to the south into Mexico, and then the trans-migration of so many into the United States to the north.

He surely understood the plight of families, single people, and unaccompanied minors fleeing every form of terror, cartel atrocities, drugs, and hopelessness--all people seeking safety, dignity, and some hope for a better future.

During the visit of Pope Francis to Mexico in February of this year, it was Archbishop Pierre who helped shape the itinerary so that Pope Francis would visit both borders:  Chiapas in the south bordering Guatemala, and Ciudad Juarez in the north bordering the United States.  Pope Francis celebrated Mass along both borders.

Archbishop Pierre also made certain that Pope Francis would celebrate Mass some distance outside Mexico City in the gritty community of Ecatepec--where hundreds of thousands live in abject poverty.  Pope Francis also visited Morelia in the very heart of a Mexican State very much in the grip of the drug cartels, and where so many people have been murdered and disappeared.

Pope Francis has sent us a new Nuncio whose heart, soul, and ministry have been shaped by Jesus Christ in his outreach to those on the outskirts of society.  I cannot imagine our receiving a new Nuncio whose life and ministry more reflects the concerns and commitment of Pope Francis himself.

In my opinion, Pope Francis has sent into our midst a Nuncio who will both proclaim and demonstrate the message of Jesus, the Good Shepherd,  towards the most vulnerable and needy in our midst, echoing the ministry of Pope Francis in our midst.

We are truly blessed with this appointment, and may God give him many blessed years among us!

ON THE BORDER WITH OUR UNDOCUMENTED BROTHERS & SISTERS

ON THE BORDER WITH OUR UNDOCUMENTED

BROTHERS and SISTERS

Cardinal Roger Mahony

February 18, 2016

AT THE US-MEXICO BORDER, EL PASO – When the visit of Pope Francis to Mexico reached its close with his February 17th Mass at Ciudad Juarez, I could’ve had the privilege to cross the border and concelebrate with him.  Instead, however, I chose to remain on the Texas side and take part in this historic “liturgy of two nations” with a large number of undocumented people who could not legally cross over to join our Holy Father, but who were able to witness the moment as the first son of immigrants to become Bishop of Rome stretched his hand over the Rio Grande to bless them on US soil.  It was an overwhelming experience!

But before that memorable Wednesday afternoon, I was blessed to spend time with a large number of young people who were present as “unaccompanied minors” – a nice way of saying that they had endured weeks and months of anguish, attacks, deprivations, and threats to reach our country.  I met with about 40 of them in El Paso before the Pope arrived.  The majority were from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. 

These were young men, 16 to 22 years old, but they all looked like children.  When I asked them to tell me their stories, they told me of how they had been sent on their journeys alone by their parents, because the options for them back home were so bleak.  If they didn’t take the risk to seek a new life elsewhere, they said that all of them would have been forced into criminal gangs in one way or the other, and they would have been made to kill and maim others for the survival of the gang. 

It’s frightening when the only future ahead of you would be to capitulate to the horror and the treachery of lawlessness in your homeland.  Instead, the parents of these men were strong enough to force them to leave behind everything they knew, and to travel “al norte” – to the north – in the hope of something better.  At great sacrifice and with a lot of money – money they couldn’t afford – they sent their sons and daughters across the the only possible route to the US: the border between Guatemala and Mexico. 

It was a moving grace to meet with these courageous young people, to come to know them, and to listen to their stories.  The only way they survived traveling north through Mexico was meeting one or two others on the same journey.  As they described it, they became compadres – brothers and sisters on a common journey – and endured incredible obstacles: drug lords controlled most of the territory they had to travel, and they were attacked, threatened, and humiliated every mile of the trip – a journey of many weeks.  Often, and in more ways than one, they faced death, whether from trying to jump onto moving trains or from a lack of food and water.  But the most frequent, and painful, reason why their lives were in danger was the lack of anyone who cared for them.

These men arrived at our border not as criminals, but as desperate souls and children of God.  All they came seeking was a future free from the crime, injustice, and slavery of being pawns in an empire of what Pope Francis calls “modern slavery”: the twin evils of drug and human trafficking which are destroying countless lives and communities in Central America. 

In the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that “whatever you did for these least brothers of mine, you did for me,” and by that standard we will be judged.  Today, what we do for these men and those like them is what we do for the Lord himself.

It was a special grace to be with these sisters and brothers of ours on the border, within eyesight of the Pope’s final Mass in Mexico.  We may have been physically divided from Juarez by the pathetic Rio Grande, guarded by the Border Patrol officers everywhere around, but in something no human obstacle can restrict – the Eucharist and the love of Christ – we were one.

When Pope Francis walked up the ramp to the shrine and prayed in grief for those who have attempted to better their lives who have crossed the border, these young men could only view the scene through fencing.  A photo tells the story – the exclusion and distance it represents is powerful.  It is the sign and story of what the Holy Father has termed “a globalization of indifference.”

But at the very same moment, another picture told of the hope that can overcome it: three of these men, offering a salute and exchange of fraternity from the North to the South.  In this, we see the Pope’s constant reminder that all of us are brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, and that – both as a church and society – as he said during his US visit last year, the mission the Lord entrusts to us is “is not about building walls, but about breaking them down.”

I returned to Los Angles with a renewed enthusiasm to walk the journey of peace, fraternity, and well-being for all of our brothers and sisters who have endured, and are now enduring, the fences that separate us.  May the Lord, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America, bless and strengthen us in our task.

Solemnidad de todos los Santos

¿Quiénes de nosotros quieremos llegar a ser santos? ¿Sabían ustedes que a través de nuestro bautizo hemos sido llamados hacer santos? ¡No es difícil! Solamente es necesario tener una entrega a Jesucristo para caminar con Jesús!